OM is the Eternal, Om is all this universe. Om is the syllable of assent: saying OM! let us hear then begin the recitation with Om. With OM they sing the hymns of the Sama; with OM SHOM they pronounce the Shāstra. With OM the priest officiating at the sacrifice says the response. With OM Brahma begins creation (or, With OM the chief priest gives sanction). With OM one sanctions the burnt offering. With OM the Brahmin ere he expound the knowledge, cries "May I attain the Eternal." The Eternal verily he attains.

OM in Chhāndogya

om iti etad akşharam udgītam upāsītā;

om iti hy udgāyati tasyopa vyākhyānam. (1.1.1)

OM is the syllable (the Imperishable One); one should follow after it as the upward Song (movement) for with OM one sings (goes) upwards; of which this is the analytical explanation.

So, literally translated in its double meaning, both its exoteric, physical and symbolic sense and its esoteric symbolized reality, runs the initial sentence of the Upanishad. These opening lines or passages of the Vedanta are always of great importance; they are always so designed as to suggest or even sum up, if not all that comes afterwards, yet the central and pervading idea of the Upanishad. The īshā vāsyam of the Vājasaneyi, the keneşhitam ... manas of the Talavakāra, the Sacrificial Horse of the Bŗhadāraņyaka, the solitary ātman with its hint of the future world vibrations in the Aitareya are of this type. The Chhāndogya, we see from its first and introductory sentence, is to be a work on the right and perfect way of devoting oneself to the Brahman; the spirit, the methods, the formulae are to be given to us. Its subject is the Brahman, but the Brahman as symbolized in the OM, the sacred syllable of the Veda; not, therefore, the pure state of the Universal Existence only, but that Existence in all its parts, the waking world and the dream self and the sleeping, the manifest, half-manifest and hidden, Bhūloka, Bhuvar and Swar,—the right means to win all of them, enjoy all of them, transcend all of them, is the subject of the Chhāndogya. OM is the symbol and the thing symbolized. It is the symbol, akşharam; the syllable in which all sound of speech is brought back to its wide, pure indeterminate state; it is the symbolised, akşharam, the changeless, undiminishing, unincreasing, unappearing, undying Reality which shows itself to experience in all this change, increase, diminution, appearance, departure which in a particular sum and harmony of them we call the world, just as OM, the pure eternal sound-basis of speech shows itself to the ear in the variations and combinations of impure sound which in a particular sum and harmony of them we call the Veda. We are to follow after this OM with all our souls, upāsita,—to apply ourselves to it and devote ourselves to its knowledge and possession, but always to OM as the Udgītha. Again in this word we have the symbolic sense and the truth symbolized expressed, as in akşharam and OM, in a single vocable with a double function and significance.

The Sanskrit has always been a language in which one word is naturally capable of several meanings and therefore carries with it a number of varied associations. It lends itself, therefore, with peculiar ease and naturalness to the figure called shleşha or embrace, the marriage of different meanings in a single form of words. Paronomasia in English is mere punning, a tour de force, an incongruity, a grotesque and artificial play of humour. Paronomasia, shleşha in Sanskrit, though in form precisely the same thing, is not punning, not incongruous but easily appropriate, not incongruous or artificial, but natural and often inevitable, not used for intellectual horseplay, but with a serious, often a high and worthy purpose. It has been abused by rhetorical writers; yet great and noble poetical effects have been obtained by its aid, as, for instance, when the same form of words has been used to convey open blame and cover secret praise. Nevertheless in classical Sanskrit, the language has become a little too rigid for the perfect use of the figure; it is too literary, too minutely grammatised; it has lost the memory of its origins. A sense of cleverness and artifice suggests itself to us because meanings known to be distinct and widely separate are brought together in a single activity of the word which usually suggests them only in different contexts. But in the Vedic shleşha we have no sense of cleverness or artifice, because the writers themselves had none. The language was still near to its origins and had, not perhaps an intellectual, but still an instinctive memory of them. With less grammatical and as little etymological knowledge as Panini and the other classical grammarians, the rishis had better possession of the soul of Sanskrit speech. The different meanings of a word, though distinct, were not yet entirely separate; many links yet survived between them which were afterwards lost; the gradations of sense remained, the hint of the word's history, the shading off from one sense to another. Ardha now means half and it means nothing else. To the Vedic man it carried other associations. Derived from the root ŗdh which meant originally to go and join, then to add to increase, to prosper, it bore the sense of place of destination, the person to whom I direct myself, or simply place; also increase, addition, a part added and so simply a part or half. To have used it in any other sense than "place of destination" or as at once "half, part" and "a place of destination" would not be a violence to the Vedic mind, but a natural association of ideas. So when they spoke of the higher worlds of Sachchidananda as Parārdha, they meant at once the higher half of man's inner existence and the param dhāma or high seat of Vişhņu in other worlds and, in addition, thought of that high seat as the destination of our upward movement. All this rose at once to their mind when the word was uttered, naturally, easily and, by long association, inevitably.

OM is a word in instance. When the word was spoken as a solemn affirmation, everyone thought of the Praņava in the Veda, but no one could listen to the word OM without thinking also of the Brahman in Its triple manifestation and in Its transcendent being. The word, akşharam, meaning both syllable and unshifting, when coupled with OM, is a word in instance; "OM the syllable" meant also, inevitably, to the Vedic mind "Brahman, who changes not nor perishes". The words udgītha and udgāyati are words in instance. In classical Sanskrit the prepositional prefix to the verb was dead and bore only a conventional significance or had no force at all; udgāyati or pragāyati is not very different from the simple gāyati; all mean merely sing or chant. But in Veda the preposition is still living and join its verb or separates itself as it pleases; therefore it keeps its full meaning always. In Vedanta the power of separation is lost, but the separate force remains. Again the roots gi and gā in classical Sanskrit mean to sing and have resigned the sense of going to their kinsman gam; but in Vedic times, the sense of going was still active and common. They meant also to express, to possess to hold; but these meanings once common to the family are now entrusted to particular members of it, gir, for expression, gŗh for holding. Gāthā, gīthā, gāna, gāyati, gātā, gātu, meant to the vedic mind both going and singing, meant ascending as well as upward the voice or the soul in song. When the Vedic singer said ud gāyāmi, the physical idea was that perhaps, of the song rising upward, but he had also the psychical idea of the soul rising up in song to the gods and fulfill idea of the soul rising upward, but he had also the psychical idea of the soul rising up in song to the gods and fulfilling in its meeting with them and entering into them its expressed aspiration. To show that this idea is not a modern etymological fancy of my own, it is sufficient to cite the evidence of the Chhāndogya Upanishad itself in this very chapter where Baka Dalbhya is spoken of as the Udgata of the Naimishiyas who obtained their desires for them by the Vedic chant, ebhyah āgāyati kāmān; so, adds the Upanishad, shall everyone be a "singer to" and a "bringrer to" of desires, āgātā kāmānām, who with this knowledge follows after OM, the Brahman, as the Udgitha.

This then is the meaning of the Upanishad that OM, the syllable, technically called the Udgītha, is to be meditated on as a symbol of the fourfold Brahman with two objects, the "singing to" of one's desires and aspirations in the triple manifestation and the spiritual ascension into the Brahman Itself so as to meet and enter into heaven after heaven and even into Its transcendent felicity. For, it says with the syllable OM one begins the chant of the Sāmaveda, or in the esoteric sense, by means of the meditation on OM one makes this soul- ascension and becomes master of all the soul desires. It is in this aspect and to this end that the Upanishad will expound OM. To explain Brahman in Its nature and workings, to teach the right worship and meditation on Brahman, to establish what are the different means of attainment of results and the formulae of the mediation and worship, is its purpose. All this work of explanation has to be done in reference to Veda and Vedic sacrifice and ritual of which OM is the substance. In a certain sense, therefore, the Upanishad in an explanation of the purpose and symbology of Vedic formulate and ritual; it sums up the results of the long travail of seeking by which the first founders and pioneers of Vedantism in an age when the secret and true senses of Veda had been largely submerged in the ceremonialism and formalism of the close of the Dwapara Yuga, attempted to recover their lost heritage partly by reference to the adepts who still remained in possession of it, partly by the traditions of the great seekers of the past Yuga, Janaka, Yājňavalkya, Kŗşhņa and others, partly by their own illuminations and spiritual experience. The Chhāndogya Upanishad is thus the summary history of one of the greatest and most interesting ages of human thought. (SA)

OM in Māndūkya

1.      OM is this imperishable word, OM is the Universe, and this is the exposition of OM. The past, the present and the future, all that was, all that is, all that will be, is OM. Likewise all else that may exist beyond the bounds of Time, that too is OM.

2.      All this Universe is the Eternal Brahman, this Self is the Eternal, and the Self is fourfold.

3.      Now this the Self, as to the imperishable Word, is OM: and as to the letters, His parts are the letters and the letters are His parts, namely, AUM.

4.      The Waker, Vaishvānara, the Universal Male, he is A, the first letter, because of Initiality and Pervasiveness: he that knows Him for such pervades and attains all his desires: he becomes the source and first.

5.      The Dreamer, Taijasa, the Inhabitant in Luminous Mind, He is U, the second letter, because of Advance and Centrality: he that knows Him for such, advances the bounds of his knowledge and rises above difference: nor of his seed is any born that knows not the eternal.

6.      The Sleeper, Prajna, the Lord of Wisdom, He is M, the third letter, because of Measure and Finality: he that knows Him for such measures with himself the Universe and becomes the departure into the Eternal.

7.      Letterless is the fourth, the Incommunicable, the end of phenomena, the good, the One than whom there is no other: thus is OM. He that knows is the self and enters by hi self into the Self, he that knows, he that knows.

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